Museum Exhibition Evaluation

Museum Exhibition Evaluation

Museum exhibition evaluation a balancing act

On one side you have visitor comprehension and on the other side you have museum mission & museum revenue.

Museum exhibition evaluation is a process to answer the question, “what is the visitor gaining from an exhibition?”. Museum exhibitions are a form of communication and museum evaluation is a method to analyze the communication of an exhibition or answer “What is the exhibition communicating to visitors?”. Exhibition evaluation can be divided into four phases, front-end evaluation, formative evaluation, remedial and summative evaluation.

Museum Audience Research / Museum Visitor Research is the study of visitor behavior, by overall museum market, geographic area or individual visitor behavior.

Museum Audience Research is the understanding of the overall museum market. Museum visitor research is a subset of museum audience research or studying the entire group of visitors to a museum versus the individual visitor to the museum.

Museum visitor study, is the process to understand museum visitor behavior and outcomes. Museum visitor behavior may include museum visitor satisfaction (or the lack of museum visitor satisfaction), museum visitor interests, and visitor previous knowledge. The museum visitor outcome may include educational objectives, interest (or lack of interest in returning to museum) and reaction to the overall museum experience.